This video is great for many reasons, but mainly because the way cuttlefish canoodle is so. Dang. Weird.

Roger Hanlon of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts recorded these two giant Australian cuttlefish making underwater whoopie. Here’s a blow-by-blow (Editor’s note: Heh.) courtesy of New Scientist:

To initiate sex, a male spreads his arms around his partner’s head [...] Once the deed is done, the female stores the deposited sperm in one of two places, either around the lining of her mouth or in a receptacle below her beak. Her eggs are fertilised internally before she lays them in crevices: they need to be protected since she will die at the end of the breeding season.

Cuttlefish may have several sexual partners during a breeding season in order to increase their chances of reproduction, but research has shown that females are unlikely to have multiple encounters in quick succession, while males demonstrate a preference for unfamiliar partners. You go, horny creatures of the deep! Get down with your bad cephs!

That’s not a euphemism, by the way—I’m not saying that the chemicals are affecting the virility of the polar bear population (though they probably are). I’m saying that some scientists in Denmark think that pollutants have been literally causing polar bear dongles to lose their bone density over time. For real.

While humans don’t actually have any bones in our boners, many mammals do—this penile bone is called a “baculum,” and it’s exact anatomical function is still unclear. Some theorize that it might help to support the penis or stimulate the female during mating, while others think it’s just an old remnant of evolution, like human wisdom teeth. Still other more radical scientists believe that the bone allows these animals to travel through time and… wait, no, that’s Bakula, not baculum. Sorry.

Anyway, Christian Sonne and a team of scientists from Aarhus University in Denmark recently looked a baculum specimens from over 270 polar bears from across Northeast Greenland and Canada, in order to track the effects of polychlorinated biphenyls in the polar bear population, a pollutant that was banned in 2001 but still can be found in high concentrations near the Arctic. They found that polar bears with unusually high amounts of polychlorinated biphenyls in their bodies have both smaller testes and a less dense baculum than other bears, which might negatively affect their mating habits. After all, if your penis might shatter to pieces when the sex gets too rough, you might decide it’s not worth propagating the species.

Despite this very common knowledge about penises and what mammals will do with them, it’s tough to tell exactly how much of an impact on mating this change in bone density will eventually have—though, as Sonne notes, bears that are nutritionally stressed are also more susceptible to pollution as well, which means double trouble for bears struggling to make sense of their shrinking habitat.

Eventually his team hopes to determine whether or not both food stress and pollutant exposure might produce any evolutionary changes in the bears as well.

Hey, maybe one day we’ll welcome them to the boneless boner party, too! Trust us, bears, it’s not so bad. Just think of all the… um, shapes you’ll be able to bend them into now! That’s a thing, right?

A team of scientists in Australia believe that they’ve discovered the the very first species to ever reproduce via copulation—meaning they’ve uncovered the first organisms that ever had to rub their genitals against one another, which is the preferred method for most mammals. The culprits? An ancient, bony species of fish that lived near what is now Scotland some 385 million years ago.

While observing fossils of this fish species, called Microbrachius dicki (snerk), Flinders University professor John Long noticed a small L-shaped “appendage” coming off the side of one of the specimens. It’s probably a tribute to the respectability of Flinders University as a scientific institution that Long didn’t immediately think “well duh, that’s a penis” and instead investigated further. Of course, it was a penis, according to the research they published in Nature journal. But that’s not the point.

So how did these fish make the trip to bone town? With “bony claspers.” Oof, did it just get warm in here?

“These are the grooves that they use to transfer sperm into the female,” Long, who later found a corresponding set of grooves on the female specimen, told BBC News. “They couldn’t have done it in a ‘missionary position.’ The very first act of copulation was done sideways, square-dance style.”

But wait, it gets sexier! He continued:

“The little arms are very useful to link the male and female together, so the male can get this large L-shaped sexual organ into position to dock with the female’s genital plates, which are very rough like cheese graters.

“They act like Velcro, locking the male organ into position to transfer sperm.”

We can’t imagine what you’re thinking this fish looks like right now.—certainly not like Jamie Frasier, that’s for damn sure. Maybe start picturing this instead:

Now picture that, square-dancing.

But the real kicker is that the researchers think these historic fishy sexcapades were actually pretty short lived; eventually the species died out, and most fish continued to spawn (that’s when the eggs are fertilized outside of the body rather than inside it) instead. Copulation wouldn’t be seen again for another couple million years, in the ancestors of sharks and rays. Which, I mean, yeah—if modern human sex involved allowing a male’s grooves to dock into my cheese grater genital plates, I’d probably be more into the idea of leaving my eggs at home and letting some dude fertilize them at his leisure, too. Ick.

If you, like us, have been gleefully following the story of the fornicating gecko-filled satellite that briefly lost contact with Earth a few months ago, then we’ve got bad news for you: According to Roskosmos space agency, all the geckos on the satellite have gone to that big lizard orgy in the sky.

A refresher: the Foton-M4 satellite was put into orbit in mid-July by the Russian Medico-Biological Institute as a way of testing the effects of zero gravity on lizard reproduction. A few weeks after launch, the Institute admitted that they no longer had contact with the satellite, and the Internet celebrated the geckos’ successful mutiny in a myriad of ways—Okay, well, mostly with jokes, but there was also some very nice art as well. But eventually, Roskosmos wrested control back from the lusty lizards, and there was much rejoicing (and even more jokes).

Today, however, they released a brief statement that all five of the geckos have died, and “the date and cause of death is being determined by experts.” Meanwhile, the fruit flies that were also on the satellite are doing so well that they’ve begun to multiply. This smells of mutiny, guys. I say whatever happens, we don’t let those fruit flies come back to Earth. They might have contracted space madness, and coupled with a taste for vertebrate-blood, that could become very dangerous.

Regardless of whatever treachery might have lead to the lizard family’s demise, one thing’s for sure: You will be missed, space sex geckos. May flights of delicious crickets sing thee to thy rest.

Real talk: you want to know why pandas are so severely endangered? Sure, poachers and other humans encroaching on their habitats is the primary factor, but it’s also partially because pandas are literally the worst at getting pregnant. So when panda would-be-mom Ai Hin showed signs of pregnancy last month, the Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Research Centre in Sichuan, China, excitedly began to make plans to livestream the birth online. I don’t think I need to tell you why that didn’t work out.

Most news outlets are running with the presumption that this panda was faking the pregnancy specifically for attention, which isn’t that out of the realm of possibility when you think abut it. After all, pregnant pandas at Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Research Centre receive around-the-clock care in an air-conditioned facility. Centre worker Wu Kongju also told state news agency Xinhua: “They also receive more buns, fruits, and bamboo, so some clever pandas have used this to their advantage to improve their quality of life.”

However, pandas are actually pretty well known for the occasional pseudopregnancy, which can often be indistinguishable from actual pregnancy due to that pesky progestin surge. The only way to make sure that they were ever actually pregnant (because some fake pregnancies can also be attributed to miscarriages, which pandas are similarly notorious for having) is to constantly be monitoring the inside of their uterus with an ultrasound.

Even stranger? Nobody knows for certain why panda’s bodies do this. Probably to mess with us, I bet. Of course, the San Diego Zoo blog has a different theory:

From an energetic perspective, it doesn’t take much effort to slow down and allow your body to become physiologically primed to gestate a panda fetus. Cubs only grow for about 50 days, which doesn’t require a long-term commitment. And if you are a panda, which only mates once every two to three years while raising a single cub in between, it is important to have that pregnancy “take.” If you miss a year, it’s a big loss to your lifetime reproductive output. When the typical lifespan of a wild panda is no more than 20 years, and a female isn’t fertile until at least 5 years of age, she can only rear about a half dozen cubs in her lifetime. Losing one has a big impact on her overall reproductive success. In the end, it could be as simple as a little cost-benefit math equation: pandas can’t afford to lose the chance to reproduce, and it doesn’t cost them much to be prepared.

In other words, “I’m going to act like I’m pregnant just in case I do get pregnant, because I am terrible at getting pregnant.” Makes sense when you put it that way.

The good news is that the workers at the Research Centre are reasonably sure they can get Ai Hin back on her feet and full of fetuses in no time. Yup, all they need is to get her in an enclosed space with a partner, pop in some panda pornography, and pray to every God that they can think of that the two will figure it out.

Wait… I worry you think I’m kidding. That is actually what they do. They show the pandas video of other pandas successfully mating to remind them how to do it. Take comfort in the knowledge that however bad at sex you might be as a feeble human, you’re not that bad.

If you share my concern over the lack of representation reptile sex receives in the media, fear not: The Mary Sue has got the lusty-lizard beat on lock. Earlier this month we told you about Russia’s rogue sex satellite full of horny geckos (and all the ensuing commemorative artwork), and now John Oliver is here with the definitive update on humanity’s recapture of the randy reptile receptacle.

As pleased as I am that the geckos won’t go fucking gently into that good night, I also don’t want to live in a world where there are no more “lizard sex satellite” headlines. Here’s hoping that someone of influence recognizes the potential of the Russian reptiles and gives them the movie they deserve. #GoGetThoseGeckosHollywood!

Last week we brought to your attention the most important thing to happen to journalism since Johannes Gutenberg cobbled together the printing press: Russia sent a quintet of geckos into space to study the effects of zero-gravity on lizard boinking (ooooh yeah), the reptilian Romeos mutinied (that’s the story I’m going with) and satellite Foton-M4 and its copulating cargo went rogue.

Thankfully, we’re not the only ones whose hearts were captured by the story–artist Fernando Reza made this amazing poster commemorating the great achievement for all lizard kind. Prints are available from Reza’s store for $25.00, a reasonable price considering this poster belongs in a museum. Go! Get! Those! Geckos!

Last Saturday Russia’s Institute of Medico-Biological Problems launched a Foton-M4 satellite filled with five geckos into orbit so that the people of earth would know how reptile booty is impacted by zero-gravity. Unfortunately, the cold-blooded casanovas had a different plan: due to a technical glitch (or possible mutiny) the orbiting orgy has gone rogue.

Al Jazeera America reports in the aptly-named article “Lust in space” that a team from the Medico-Biological Institute admitted yesterday that the satellite was no longer responding to commands from Earth. The Russian space firm Progress reports that the technical difficulties may be due to a glitch in the satellite’s engine, but I think it’s equally likely that the dirtbag geckos decided they wanted researchers to be able to look, but not touch: the sex cam beaming a live feed down to Earth is still functioning, and the four females and one male have reportedly been “keeping busy.” Researchers had originally hoped to recover the crew after 60 days to continue experiments back on our planet, but if contact can’t be reestablished the Institute predicts its geckonauts will starve to death before Foton-M4 crashes back to Earth.

Hopefully some lizard people, er, concerned citizens can help re-establish contact with the craft before it crashes, but in the meantime, I suggest we all give a thumbs-up to the stars tonight. Somewhere above us, hurtling through space, is the kind of pleasure we on Earth can only dream of.

While I don’t like the connotations that the phrase “walk of shame” has (shouldn’t it be march of fist-pumping triumph instead?), a female manatee now has the walk of shame story to put all others to, well, shame after an extreme sex-hangover left her stranded on a beach in Florida last week. We get it, Ms.Manatee, you’re hot shit, okay?

The sexy sea-cow was found on Florida’s Disappearing Island Beach by Jim Yurecka, who estimates that the lovely lady had first engaged in approximately six hours of manatee on womanatee action. The manatee’s partner(s)—Yurecka says he saw an entire herd mating—returned to the water, but left the lone female behind to bask in the kind of satisfaction most of us can only dream of. When it became clear the manatee might be in danger, Yurecka contacted the Fish And Wildlife Conservation Commission, which promptly set up a manatee rescue-tent to keep the 10-foot, 1,000 pound mammal hydrated and super-fly. The manatee’s repeated requests for a cigarette (I’m guessing) were denied, and eventually a twenty-person team of tourists and officials returned her to the sea on a stretcher.

It is quite natural for female manatees to swim to shallow water during mating season [...] The manatee was only about 30 feet away from the water [...] It just appeared that the female manatee was too tired to go back by itself.

]]>http://www.themarysue.com/florida-manatee-rescued-from-sexhaustion-after-six-hour-mating-session/feed/0Horny Frogs Stop at Nothing to Get It On, Use Storm Drains to Make Booty Calls - Frogs are always in the gutter and they like it there. http://www.themarysue.com/tree-frogs-be-getting-mad-rutty/
http://www.themarysue.com/tree-frogs-be-getting-mad-rutty/#commentsFri, 06 Jun 2014 18:55:52 +0000http://www.geekosystem.com/?p=210247

The relentless march of urban sprawl has ruined a lot of things, but not frog sex! A recent study reveals that tree frogs are using man-made structures to become more irresistible to potential mates than ever before… so, hey, if humanity destroys everything else, at least we’ll have an unprecedented number of frogs!

In unsullied tree frog habitats, the male of the species uses his call to attract a mate, and lady frogs choose their partner based on which call they find most attractive. To make sure their flirting is heard, the males find methods of amplification—tree-hole frogs, for example, use the resonance of hollows in trees to make sure all the ladies know what’s up (tiny frog dicks are, I presume).

Frogs are so skilled at bringing girls to the yard, in fact, that their mating calls haven’t been compromised by said yard being replaced with concrete. In urban areas of Taiwan, new research shows some species are getting their groove back by using man-made structures like telephone poles, roads, and storm drains for hook-ups.

Yu-Teh Kirk Lin of National Taiwan University authored a study recently in the Journal of Zoology on Mientien tree frogs and the “miniature urban canyons” they use as mics for their romancing. Storm drains, for example, increase the volume and duration of a frog’s call, which might be false advertising but is so effective that Lin hypothesizes Mientien frogs are even mating and living in their man-made sex caves.

Concrete drains are miniature canyons, but are not analogous to anything in Mientien tree frog natural habitats[...]Therefore, it is interesting to find those frogs preferentially calling in the drains.

]]>http://www.themarysue.com/tree-frogs-be-getting-mad-rutty/feed/1Bushcrickets Have Some Of The Kinkiest Sex In The Insect Kingdom - So you can bust that line out at the next party you hit up.http://www.themarysue.com/bushcricket-sex/
http://www.themarysue.com/bushcricket-sex/#commentsSun, 01 Jun 2014 17:30:00 +0000http://www.geekosystem.com/?p=209357

Are you finding your sex life lacking? Need to spice it up in the bedroom? Then look no further for inspiration than the bushcricket, whose sex life is so weird and so freaky that it puts most NC-17 fanfic to shame.

Bushcrickets, typically gentle insects, have developed what some scientists are calling an exceptionally violent mating routine. Here’s how things used to go down: the bushcrickets would mate, leaving the lady-cricket with a sperm-bag that takes some time to drain into her. To stop the lady-cricket from detaching the bag and peacing out, the dude-cricket would produce a special type of jelly for the lady-cricket to eat. This jelly is delicious and distracting, and ensures that the lady sticks around long enough for the sperm to actually get to work. Basically, the dude-cricket would make her dinner.

But now, apparently, dude-crickets aren’t doing the dinner thing any more. They’re over the romance. Instead, they’ve developed “clasping devices” near their genitals to hold down the female for up to seven hours during mating. The claspers can take the shape of spiked hooks that pierce through her body, bear traps, wrap-around tongs, or interlocking “handcuffs.” As you can imagine, the lady-crickets aren’t loving it, and spend most of the mating process jumping, biting, and kicking her parter.

But seriously, what was so wrong with the jelly dinner? Someone needs to teach these new dude-crickets about consent, stat.

We know you’re probably stuck in the San Diego Comic-Con badge registration waiting room with the rest of us. Sure, you could do something productive with your time, but that sounds awful. Instead, why not watch (and listen, the noises are gold) to this NSFW-ish video of two tortoises having sex?

]]>http://www.themarysue.com/tortoises-bang/feed/1Female Frogs Tricked by Scientists Into Responding to Fake Mating Calls From Robots - We're certain this proves some very, very important things about evolution and so forth. We're just not at all sure what any of those things are.http://www.themarysue.com/frog-robot-mating-calls/
http://www.themarysue.com/frog-robot-mating-calls/#commentsWed, 17 Jul 2013 12:15:25 +0000http://www.geekosystem.com/?p=165624Túngara frog, who can typically be found croaking away in Central America. Scientists from the University of Texas discovered a way to fool the female of the Túngara frog species into responding to bogus mating calls that shouldn't even be possible, all using a robot imposter frog to do it. What's next, a cyborg-frog hybrid species? Man was not meant to toy with nature thus!]]>

Science is great for a lot of things — curing diseases, discovering new sources of energy, what have you. However, science is also responsible for a lot of accidents that weird us out more than anything else. Case in point: consider the Túngara frog, who can typically be found croaking away in Central America. Scientists from the University of Texas discovered a way to fool the female of the Túngara frog species into responding to bogus mating calls that shouldn’t even be possible, all using a robot impostor frog to do it. What’s next, a cyborg-frog hybrid species? Man was not meant to toy with nature thus!

First, the team attempted to recreate all the different components of the male Túngara frog’s mating call with a replica, which is a pretty good likeness judging from the below video. You know, until the very end. I hope that never happens to actual frogs.

They then studied the way in which male frogs actually seduce their female counterparts, made a handy chart of behavior patterns, and tested that chart out by trying those patterns on the female frogs using their new robot.

The result was that the researchers uncovered some ways of provoking attraction in a female Túngara frog that could never have existed in nature — not to mention a whole load of confused lady frogs:

Poor girl — she’s basically getting catfished. By a frog!

Basically, by combining multiple aspects of the mating call — a “whine,” a “chuck,” and an expansion of the vocal sac — the researchers were somehow were able to trick the frog into thinking that she was actually hearing the correct mating call, which got her all excited for potential frog sex.

The original news release to Texas Science Daily describes it thusly, quoting head biologist Michael Ryan:

Ryan compared the phenomenon to what’s called a “continuity illusion” in humans. If loud enough white noise is played in between a pair of beeps, humans will begin to perceive the beeps as a continuous tone. It’s not fully understood why this happens, but it’s probably a byproduct of our brains’ useful ability to filter out background noise.

Túngara frogs are challenged by an auditory world similar to what confronts humans in noisy environments (what’s called the “cocktail party problem” by cognitive scientists). At breeding choruses there is a lot of noise and cross talk, with sounds and images of several males reaching the female at different times. The females need to extract meaningful information from all of that. Ryan said it’s plausible the neural mechanisms that enable them to correctly parse these stimuli in nature are being hijacked by this artificial scenario.

So what should we take away from this? Well, that certain animals are very good at adapting to new situations to prolong their genetic lines… or they’re just really dumb when it comes to sex. Actually, come to think of it, that may be a lot of animals.

]]>http://www.themarysue.com/frog-robot-mating-calls/feed/1Make It Count, Dude: Spider Species Dies After Having Sex - Male dark fishing spiders have just one roll in the hay in them. After mating, the arachnids immediately curl up and die.http://www.themarysue.com/spiders-die-after-sex/
http://www.themarysue.com/spiders-die-after-sex/#commentsWed, 19 Jun 2013 13:45:13 +0000http://www.geekosystem.com/?p=156232Consider if you will the sorry state of Dolomedes tenebrosus, the dark fishing spider. A recent study of the spiders, common around the American midwest, found that males of the species get a grand total of one shot at breeding -- immediately after copulation, their work on this Earth done, the creatures promptly curl up and die.]]>

I know the human dating game can seem rough at times, but the fact of the matter is, we have it pretty good. Don’t believe me? Consider if you will the sorry state of Dolomedes tenebrosus, the dark fishing spider. A recent study of the spiders, common around the American midwest, found that males of the species get a grand total of one shot at breeding — immediately after copulation, their work on this Earth done, the creatures promptly curl up and die.

The discovery that male dark fishing spiders are essentially single-use seed packets was made after researchers from the University of Nebraska gathered specimens of the arachnids from parks around the state and used them to play the world’s most terrifying version of The Dating Game.* In each of 25 observed matings, the male spider delivered sperm into the female before almost immediately going limp and dying. The study, published this week in the journal Biology Letters, also found that the spider’s pedipalp, which it uses to deliver sperm, remained frightfully swollen following mating, unlike the pedipalps of males in other species, which shrink back down. Not that the spiders probably mind, being dead and all, but it does seem to add a little unnecessary insult to a pretty serious injury.

While there are a number of species in which females help their mates along to their final reward following a roll in the hay, female dark fishing spiders don’t seem to play any role in the deaths of their partners. Rather than being assaulted or having their head torn off and consumed like many species of mantis, the spiders seem to have simply wrapped up the worldly business, peacefully curling up and moving on to the great beyond, grotesquely engorged genitalia and all.

While dying after sex may seem strange to us, the phenomenon dovetails pretty well with what we know about evolution in sexually dimorphic species — animals in which one gender is much larger than the other. Since small animals — like the male dark fishing spider, which is outweighed by its female counterpart by about a 14 to 1 ratio — have a better chance of living long enough to mate, they’re lucky just to find one viable partner. That means monogamy is common in these animals, though the dark fishing spider does seem to be taking the principle to an extreme.

]]>http://www.themarysue.com/spiders-die-after-sex/feed/1How the Chicken Lost Its Penis - A Current Biology study published this week explains how evolution left most bird species penis-free.http://www.themarysue.com/how-the-chicken-lost-its-penis/
http://www.themarysue.com/how-the-chicken-lost-its-penis/#commentsThu, 06 Jun 2013 19:10:06 +0000http://www.geekosystem.com/?p=154552A new study of a wide range of birds has revealed a key gene that stymies penis growth in males and suggests a few reasons that nixing the penis could be evolutionarily advantageous for the animals, though it does make calling a male rooster a cock among the crueler jokes in the history of time.]]>

Researchers have long wondered why evolution robbed many bird species – like the chicken — of a piece of anatomy considered pretty key in most of the breeding we’re familiar with — the penis. A new study of a wide range of birds has revealed a key gene that stymies penis growth in males and suggests a few reasons that nixing the penis could be evolutionarily advantageous for the animals, though it does make calling a male rooster a cock among the crueler jokes in the history of time.

Rather than a penis, male chickens have, like most birds, a cloaca, a multipurpose orifice used for urinating, defecating, and mating, which is generally performed using a “cloacal kiss” in which the male and female of a species will touch these orifices together long enough for the male to transfer sperm from his cloaca into that of the female and and beginning fertilization. This notably demure sex act has left researchers wondering why some birds, like kiwis, ostriches, some ducks, and their relatives have penises while others, like the chicken, have developed the cloacal kiss instead.

Researchers led by Martin Cohn at the University of Florida asked that question and found a surprising answer. Chickens, it turns out, do have normal penises — or at least, penises that start off developing normally. In their early embryonic stages, chickens develop the bud of a penis. Later, though, as the chick keeps growing, a gene known as Bmp24 kicks into gear and nips penis growth in the bud. By the time they’re hatched, the incipient genitals of the male have withered away to nothing. In birds like ducks and emu, which still have penises they use for mating, Bmp24 remains off, allowing the animals to grow more traditional sex organs.

Some birds, meanwhile, can’t seem to make up their minds on the penis/no penis issue. Both male and female cassowaries, for example, have a penis-like sex organ, but it’s not connected to their reproductive system, and sperm is still introduced in the species via the cloaca. Perhaps this should make us feel more connected with the natural world, though — bird or human, penis or no penis, it seems, mating is an often complicated and occasionally awkward proposition.

Now that they know how birds left their genitals behind, evolutionarily speaking, researchers can move on to the more difficult question of why they did so. Among their early speculation is a theory that a lack of a penis leaves males less sexually aggressive than they might otherwise be. Considering how sexually aggressive — and deeply inappropriate – penis-endowed ducks can be, it’s certainly not a bad notion to start from.

]]>http://www.themarysue.com/how-the-chicken-lost-its-penis/feed/3Aww, They Think They’re People: Male Bats Perform Oral Sex on Femaleshttp://www.themarysue.com/bat-oral-sex/
http://www.themarysue.com/bat-oral-sex/#commentsTue, 02 Apr 2013 21:55:49 +0000http://www.geekosystem.com/?p=144799
Earlier today, we brought you news of a sea lion that dances along to Backstreet Boys. This evening brings more news of animals partaking in an activity once thought to be the sole dominion of enlightened animals like us humans: Oral sex. Analysis of a colony of flying foxes in India found that males of the species perform oral sex on females. Yup, you read that right.]]>

Earlier today, we brought you news of a sea lion that dances along to Backstreet Boys. This evening brings more news of animals partaking in an activity once thought to be the sole dominion of enlightened animals like us humans: Oral sex. Analysis of a colony of flying foxes in India found that males of the species perform oral sex on females. Yup, you read that right.

Researchers suggest that the male bats go down on their partners for pretty much the same reason anyone else does — to spice things up in bed and keep their partners around longer. That’s according to a recent study by researchers from the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada.

Publishing their paper (Cunnilingus Apparently Increases Duration of Copulation in the Indian Flying Fox) in the journal PLOS ONE, the team found that bat sex typically began with an average of 50 seconds of the male performing cunnilingus on the female he was wooing, demonstrating that bat courtships start at about date three. The initial cunnilingus was typically followed by 10-20 seconds of frenzied copulation, which was in turn followed by between 94 and 188 seconds of copulation. This, of course, is considered just good manners following a 20-second bout of copulation. Researchers did find, though, that pre-copulation oral sex resulted in longer periods of copulation between the bats.

Naturally, this series of events came as something of a surprise to researchers. After all, as they say in the introduction to the paper, “Apart from humans, oral sex as foreplay prior to copulation is uncommon in mammals.” Though it should be pointed out, it’s uncommon in a pretty depressing number of humans, too, am I right, folks?

One of the very few other animal species in the world known to engage in oral sex is the greater short-nosed fruit bat, Cynopterus sphinx, a species in which females perform oral sex on males prior to mating.

]]>http://www.themarysue.com/bat-oral-sex/feed/2Male Guppies Hang With Their Ugliest Friends to Improve Their Own Chances of Getting Somehttp://www.themarysue.com/guppies-ugly-friends/
http://www.themarysue.com/guppies-ugly-friends/#commentsWed, 13 Feb 2013 19:50:16 +0000http://www.geekosystem.com/?p=137230
With Valentine's Day around the corner, plenty of us are getting our annual harsh reminder that finding love can be really, really hard. We might like to say it's not so, but the fact is, whether you're a guppy or a human, looks count for a lot in the dating game. Like most things, though, looks are all relative -- the worse looking the crowd we find ourselves in, the better looking we seem to be. According to a study published this week in the Proceedings of the Royal Academy of Science B, guppies looking for love long ago perfected the mating tactic of surrounding themselves with specimens less attractive than they are, a tried and true human trait on display in bars across the world every weekend.]]>

With Valentine’s Day around the corner, plenty of us are getting our annual harsh reminder that finding love can be really, really hard. We might like to say it’s not so, but the fact is, whether you’re a guppy or a human, looks count for a lot in the dating game. Like most things, though, looks are all relative — the worse looking the crowd we find ourselves in, the better looking we seem to be. According to a study published this week in the Proceedings of the Royal Academy of Science B, guppies looking for love long ago perfected the mating tactic of surrounding themselves with specimens less attractive than they are, a tried and true human trait on display in bars across the world every weekend.

It’s not pleasant, and it’s not noble, but the fact is plenty of us have invited a slightly more trollish friend out to act as our wingman for a night on the town — I mean, what’s your other option there? Invite a better looking guy out with you? That’s clearly a fool’s game. If you’ve never done this before, you have our congratulations on being a very good, decent and warmhearted human being, Or, our condolences on being the fuggliest fella in your friend group. Maybe both.

If you have done this, before, though, you’re thinking like a guppy, which is the first time in recorded history that set of words hasn’t been entirely derogatory. To test whether or not male guppies preferred the company of less attractive peers when researchers at the University of Western Australia placed two female guppies in a tank. One was surrounded by colorful males with lots of orange coloration — the true test of guppy attractiveness — and the other in the company of less colorful males. When a new male was introduced to the tank, the study found he tended to gravitate toward the female surrounded by less attractive males, sensing that the competition was easier.

The guppies also seemed to have a surprising degree of understanding of their own attractiveness, with less colorful males more likely to be drawn to the female already in the company of less attractive males. Since guppies are one of the few fish who reproduce internally — through traditional sex, rather than releasing eggs into the water where males then fertilize them — how good looking a guppy is can effect it’s chances of breeding, as males can keep mating with a female until a better looking example of guppy masculinity catches her eye.

For guppies whose best traits tend to be their sense of humor and don’t have it going on in the looks department, that means their best chance to keep mating is to be the best of bad lot. What can we say — we know that feel, bro.

]]>http://www.themarysue.com/guppies-ugly-friends/feed/4Not How That Works! Man Tries to Impregnate Horse, Create Centaur in Worst Possible Wayhttp://www.themarysue.com/man-tries-to-impregnate-horse/
http://www.themarysue.com/man-tries-to-impregnate-horse/#commentsWed, 06 Feb 2013 18:50:01 +0000http://www.geekosystem.com/?p=13637229-year-old Texas man Andrew Mendoza was arrested for having sex with his neighbor's horse after being stood up by his girlfriend. To make the story even worse, Mendoza told police he was trying to "make the horse have a baby," because he thought it would have a "horse-man baby." That, Mr. Mendoza, is not how you get a centaur.]]>29-year-old Texas man Andrew Mendoza was arrested for having sex with his neighbor’s horse after being stood up by his girlfriend. To make the story even worse, Mendoza told police he was trying to “make the horse have a baby,” because he thought it would have a “horse-man baby.” That, Mr. Mendoza, is not how you get a centaur.

Surprisingly, or not surprisingly depending on you feel about Texas, Mendoza’s mistake in the eyes of the law wasn’t that he violated a horse, but rather that he didn’t do it in private. Mendoza plead guilty to charges of public lewdness and criminal trespass. According to chapter 21, section seven of the Texas penal code, Public Lewdness is defined this way:

Sec. 21.07. PUBLIC LEWDNESS. (a) A person commits an offense if he knowingly engages in any of the following acts in a public place or, if not in a public place, he is reckless about whether another is present who will be offended or alarmed by his:

(1) act of sexual intercourse;

(2) act of deviate sexual intercourse;

(3) act of sexual contact; or

(4) act involving contact between the person’s mouth or genitals and the anus or genitals of an animal or fowl.

(b) An offense under this section is a Class A misdemeanor.

I’ll go on record as saying it should probably be a lot more illegal than it is to have sex with an animal in Texas, or anywhere for that matter. Mendoza was sentenced to four months is jail, and I think he really taught his girlfriend a lesson about the consequences of standing people up.

]]>http://www.themarysue.com/man-tries-to-impregnate-horse/feed/10Unrepentant Florida Donkey Diddler Accepts Plea Deal, Will Continue To Fight For His Right To Donkey Sexhttp://www.themarysue.com/carlos-romero-accepts-plea-deal/
http://www.themarysue.com/carlos-romero-accepts-plea-deal/#commentsMon, 17 Dec 2012 15:30:34 +0000http://www.geekosystem.com/?p=128980
Last week, we brought you the latest developments in the case of Carlos Romero, a Florida farmhand allegedly caught in a sexually compromising position with a miniature donkey named Doodle. It would appear that the judge in the case, Steven Rogers, did not grant the argument made by Romero's lawyers that laws on the books in Florida prohibiting sexual contact with animals violated the U.S. Constitution, a fact which is to Florida's credit. Today, we bring you news that should bring some kind of merciful closure to this sordid affair -- but probably won't -- as Romero has accepted a plea bargain.]]>

Last week, we brought you the latest developments in the case of Carlos Romero, a Florida farmhand allegedly caught in a sexually compromising position with a miniature donkey named Doodle. It would appear that the judge in the case, Steven Rogers, did not grant the argument made by Romero’s lawyers that laws on the books in Florida prohibiting sexual contact with animals violated the U.S. Constitution, a fact which is to Florida’s credit. Today, we bring you news that should bring some kind of merciful closure to this sordid affair — but probably won’t — as Romero has accepted a plea bargain.

The plea Romero accepted will see him serve no jail time, but will pay a $200 fine and be on probation for one year, and will also require that he undergo STD testing and submit himself for a psychosexual evaluation. It also prohibits him from having contact with children or animals, a fact that will no doubt complicate Romero’s finding work as a farmhand, though we are forced to assume that the whole “admitted, unrepentant animal molester” thing would already complicate Romero’s upcoming job search in that august field.

Those of you who have been following this story — and if you have, we really can’t apologize enough — may recall that this is the same plea deal that Romero turned down as unfair in October. So what’s changed? Well, the judge in the case denied claims by Romero’s lawyers that the law against sex with animals is unconstitutional, writing in part:

“Upon reviewing the subject statute, this Court is confident that a person of ordinary intelligence would have ample notice that sexual conduct or sexual conduct (as defined by the statute) with a donkey is prohibited.”

Romero, who has admitted to having sex with horses in the past, but claimed only to be grooming Doodle for sex in the future, plans to appeal the court’s decision, and cited the fact that he can do more work on that appeal on probation than while serving time in jail. For those of you playing along at home, this marks Romero’s official transition from Horse Sex Aficionado to Crusading Horse Sex Rights Activist.

Oh, and did we say we were almost done with this one? Maybe not so much — stay tuned next Friday, when Romero is supposed to be back in court fighting Marion County for custody of the donkey, Doodle.

]]>http://www.themarysue.com/carlos-romero-accepts-plea-deal/feed/4Objection! Lawyers For Man Accused Of Donkey Sex Say Anti-Donkey Sex Laws Are Unconstitutionalhttp://www.themarysue.com/donkey-sex-laws-constitution/
http://www.themarysue.com/donkey-sex-laws-constitution/#commentsTue, 11 Dec 2012 21:15:30 +0000http://www.geekosystem.com/?p=128157
Today in "Yeah, well, it's Florida, what are you gonna do?" news, the latest developments from the long, strange case of Carlos Romero, a Florida man accused of sex acts involving a miniature donkey named Doodle. In a legal maneuver that we pray came as a surprise to the court, Romero's lawyers have filed a motion to have the Florida law that criminalizes sexual behavior with an animal struck down on the basis that it violates the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. Yup, you read that right.]]>

Today in “Yeah, well, it’s Florida, what are you gonna do?” news, the latest developments from the long, strange case of Carlos Romero, a Florida man accused of sex acts involving a miniature donkey named Doodle. In a legal maneuver that we pray came as a surprise to the court, Romero’s lawyers have filed a motion to have the Florida law that criminalizes sexual behavior with an animal struck down on the basis that it violates the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. Yup, you read that right.

In addition to violating theEqual Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, attorneys for Mr. Romero argue, the one year jail sentence for participating in sexual activities involving animals — a first degree misdemeanor in Florida — amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. In the motion, Romero’s legal team argues that it is none of the state of Florida’s business what he does with his miniature donkey in the privacy of someone else’s barn, writing in part:

By making sexual conduct with an animal a crime, the statute demeans individuals like Defendant by making his private sexual conduct a crime.

Jury selection in the trial of Mr. Romero — who turned down a plea earlier this year, choosing instead to take his chances in court — begins later this month.

Before we go, though, it’s incumbent upon us to take a moment to offer a bit of praise to Romero’s legal team here. All joking aside, no one can accuse Romero’s trio of public defenders — Joshua Wyatt, Scott Schmidt and Joshua Lukman – of not doing absolutely everything in their power to win the day in court for the so-far less than entirely cooperative Mr. Romero. These three guys are going to have their names attached forever to a legal document stating that sex with animals shouldn’t be against the law because they believe their client deserves the best representation they can offer. You can giggle at the results, but don’t knock the spirit in which it’s undertaken.